Page 119 - Solving Housing Disputes

reintroduce housing advice and representation meaningfull where there is none.
Flexible deployment of the court and tribunal estate is needed to help vulnerable
people get to hearings where they face the prospect of losing their home.

5.12 Negotiation and mediative methods of dispute resolution, which might be more
successful in sustaining tenant-landlord relationships than adversarial methods,
need to be encouraged more strongly. Structural obstacles to their uptake must
be removed. We acknowledge local authorities are under pressure to deliver for
people facing homelessness with limited resources and little housing stock.
However, we were told too often that many deploy gatekeeping methods to turn
people away when they are in need. Those practices need to change, and we set
out several recommendations to address them, such as modification of the
Homelessness Code of Guidance to prevent portals being the sole method of
contact and a unified approach across the local government sector to offer best
practice in digital design for portals.

5.13 The desire to promote access to justice through changes to current processes in
dispute resolution should be married to the establishment of a single point of
entry into the system. The Strengthening Consumer Redress paper published by
the MHCLG in 2019 shows a desire to consolidate all pre-existing housing
redress schemes into one digital portal: The Housing Complaints Resolution
Service (HCRS).

5.14 We propose a more expansive version of the HCRS: a sole portal to initiate all
housing disputes – whether court, tribunal, redress scheme or tenancy deposit,
which would feature legal advice and representation, structured guidance, ADR
and procedural assistance by case workers operating as part of a single point of
entry. That proposal should be met by the establishment of a core cadre of
specialist housing judges and a judicially led overview and assessment of which
jurisdiction should house which disputes. Our HCRS is an opportunity to assist
people with housing disputes through a single, joined up pathway. It also
represents the prospect of capturing a wide array of data and information on
systemic problems to feed back to regulators and legislators.

5.15 We expect these changes could be addressed by a willing government promptly.
The MHCLG Redress Working Group has already convened, and we understand
they will be developing a model for the HCRS in 2020, while the implementation
of the Legal Support Action Plan is in its early phases.

113